2nd Cuppa (or: Not Fully Awake)

Not yet fully awake. That's a pretty relevant statement, actually. Not fully awake. Science tells us that we use only a small portion of our brains, considering the size and number of cells and neurons and synapses. And many of us, (yours truly, for instance) have problems with the synapses we do use firing properly. (Enter SSRI's and MAOI's, and Lithium and Depacote and myriad other medications which are intended to help our brains do what they should be doing all on their own.) But really, that's another story.

I think my issue today, what I fell asleep too tired after tattooing for 4 hours, and then spending the next 3 catching up on my blog reading and link chasing, is my feeling that we are not fully awake. And I could well be wrong, but it seems to me that there are an awful lots of folks who truly believe that they are! There are alot of people who really believe that they have all the answers, know whats best for us as individuals, as a country, as women, as citizens of the world.

I'm not just talking about the religious right, republicans and government. I read, I think. I see the left trying to do the same damn thing! Environmentalists, activists, democrats. Everyone has an "ideal", and wants to impose it on the rest of us. And it doesn't help that in order to actually reach some sort of middle ground - some sort of reasonable compromise; that opposing factions need to exaggerate and amplify the issue completely out of proportion and present things in either/or, black/white terms.

I'm no better. Well, not better anyway, but there is maybe one small difference. I try really hard to distinguish between an ideal world/situation, and the reality of living in a human world. I understand that "The Ideal" is just that.

You might have noticed that I didn't really comment on Imus. I haven's said much about the VT shootings, or the so-called "manifesto of hate". You won't find me writing about capital punishment, or saying much about illegal immigrants. You'll prolly never read anything here (past today) about the hot topic of gun control.

"Why not", you might ask. Because I am clear in myself that I simply cannot have a position on these things without feeling myself a hypocrite.

Imus? Free speech is our constitutional right. Do I like what he said? No. Do I approve of such degrading terms being spoken? No. Would I ever listen to that asshole spew his hate? No. Do I think he should be silenced? No. Do I uphold the right of consumers and sponsors to choose not to support him? Yes. Whatever. In the end, I choose to accept that I have this wide range of feelings on the topic. That for me there is no "right" or "wrong" except as I personally perceive the different questions within the context of the event. There is no one bandwagon for me to jump on and claim alliance with.

The VT shootings? Very sad for the people involved, the victims, the friends and family. The president going to console them? Please. In my blogcruising yesterday, a blogger asked how people would feel if GWB came to console them, were they the parents of the shooting victims. The comments ranged from spitting on him to killing him. I had to laugh. It was a tough question answered honestly by folks who are anti war and perhaps didn't see the irony of their response. The media and lobbyist circus all claiming the incident in support of their particular "cause"? Please. 30 something dead is a "national tragedy"? Puh-leeeeze!!! Hurricane fucking Katrina was a national tragedy!!! Not the hurricane itself, or even the damage that it and the lives it claimed and ruined; but the LACK of governmental response!!! THAT was the tragedy!

We get up in arms and babble for days about Imus and a guy going off the deep end at VT when thousands are dieing and starving and homeless; being mutilated and tortured and repressed and subjugated; raped, murdered, sold, bought... every fucking day all around our so called Global fucking Village???

And the disturbed young man who committed this "senseless" act. What about him? Is he to be used as an example of a "domestic terrorist" to further frighten a nation into allowing even greater usurpation of our freedoms, under such atrocities of anti-constitutionalism as the Patriot Act?? Shall we dismiss him as a madman, or just someone with an inferiority complex who was scared of women?

Or is he in fact a very clear indication of the human condition? Of our self-centered, consumer driven and power seeking human selves? Is he maybe even the manifestation of a symptom of the pervasive illness that eats away at our humanity like a cancer? It is like a cancer. Or maybe more like herpes. No, really. We all carry the herpes virus in our spinal fluid. It erupts in various ways from cold sores to shingles to an STD. It also erupts due to a number of different causes. Stress, communication/contagion, diet.

Is violence like that within us? A deep and often (and in many) quiescent "virus" hiding in our very physiology, our very humanness, only to erupt at various and varying instigators? Some skewed manifestation of the "Flight or Fight" response?

I think so. I really do.

I don't claim to be "fully awake". Not by a long shot. But I believe that my awareness that I'm not, is a far cry from the sleepwalking that I see many doing.

Maybe I'm crazy somehow, or my thinking is skewed. I dunno, but I can't seem to help looking at every issue, every topic, every "position" or "stand" from my personal perspective. From the position of "What would I do?" No, really!!!! Not what would be the ideal; but really and truly:

What would I do?

Example:
Do I support capital punishment? Ideally; no. Why? because I believe that people who wantonly murder are nuts. Ill. Something wrong with them. Period. Not from some religious or moral belief, just my simple belief that people who do stuff like what that kid did at VT are sick motherfuckers. Do we kill the mentally ill?

Now, let's get real. Am I pacifist enough to believe that if someone murdered say, my daughter; tortured and raped her, that I would be able to forgive? That I wouldn't want him to die? That I might feel that a quick and painless death would be more than he deserved?? Mightn't I even wish to pull the switch myself?? When I really look into my heart, the best I can come up with is "I don't know". Really. I simply don't know. I don't know which part of me would win in a battle like that. That might just be a circumstance which would send that virus into overdrive and I'd be so disease filled that murder would be my only possible response. I mean, I'd shoot a rabid dog... right?

I don't know.

What I do know is that every book or movie I've ever seen about a person waiting for a death sentence to be carried out upon his/her person has filled me with horror. No matter how heinous was the crime. My compassion and empathy for the condemned was so huge, so encompassing that at that moment I could scream aloud, "NOOOOOO". This is wrong!

But will I take a stand on this issue? No. Because I cannot with any surety, once I fully put myself in both positions and consider the "ideal", say that I could personally uphold either position. Nor can I say that I would like to see it legislated. Because we are all flawed, we are not fully awake, and there is no "right" answer.

(Okay, I'm on a roll now, and I have to say this stuff.) Gun control. Do I think there are too many guns and too much easy access to guns and too many people killed by guns? Yes. Do I uphold my "right to bear arms"? Yes. Am I a member of the NRA? No.

As one of 4 women, living on 40 acres in the middle of the desert (7 miles from town and an hour from help by the local sheriff in an emergency), as lesbians living in a hick town (yes, there are plenty of them in Cali), as americans living in a country rife with home invasion, murder and rape... I have a couple of guns. A shotgun with a serious choke, a 22 rifle and a lil 22 popgun). They are placed strategically for both the safety of any visiting kids and easy access for me in the case of necessary self protection. I haven't needed them yet, and hope I never will. But don't tell me I can't have them.

Ideally, they shouldn't be necessary. Personally and practically, they are. Yet another issue I simply can't take a stand on. What makes me wanna shoot somebody is the parents who have not secured their gun from the curious minds and hands of their 4 year old who shoots off her sister's face. But really... that is a different issue, no matter how many gun control lobbyists want to convince us otherwise. That is a PARENTING issue. NOT a gun issue. My partner drank kerosene from beneath a BBQ in the back yard when she was 3. Shall we outlaw kerosene?? Anyway, that's a whole 'nother rant.

I've read a number of books by Starhawk, who describes herself as: author of many works celebrating the Goddess movement and Earth-based, feminist spirituality. I’m a peace, environmental, and global justice activist and trainer, a permaculture designer and teacher, a Pagan and Witch.
A really good one about power and ethics is
Truth or Dare, although I admit I felt a little too "lectured" and even scolded from time to time (but that was prolly mostly due to the fact that I fall so far short of my own ideals), but the book that I read that really woke me up to my own humanity was The The Fifth Sacred Thing.

It's a fictional rendering of a sort of post apocalyptic life in a community in Northern Cali. For the first while, it seems somewhat Utopian. The community governs by a council of elders and by consensus. There are rituals and worship of a variety and homogeneity that you can only imagine, and all are free to worship/honor or not as they choose. To someone like me, the vision presented is idyllic, although I did have to face my inner demons of insecurity and jealousy around monogomy, as well as my childrearing beliefs and my desire to "own" things and name them "mine". Still, all in all, I could get my head around the idealism that would make such a community flourish.

Then the "bad guys" show up. You know the ones. The ones that want to "Govern" and "Restore order". The ones that want something the community has. It doesn't really matter what it is. Water, salt, land; bodies for cannon fodder so they can go on governing and restoring order...

(I hate to be a spoiler so stop reading now if you intend to read the book and don't want to know about the end)

So our idyllic Northern Cali utopia is invaded by an army. This army is made up of folks much like "our" own army over in Iraq right now, or any army ever anywhere, for that matter. Just people. People who needed a job or an education. People who believed they were serving the greater good. People who are leaders. People who follow blindly. All of the above and more.

And the overall consensus on the strategy of the community response is pacifism. The forms that the pacifism take are interesting and more varied than one would think, but the biggest weapon is a simple statement. A statement that the community makes individually and as a group. A statement that they hold to as their members (including a few children) are martyred for their community ideals, their way of life, their decision to live free from violence - or die. The statement is, simply:

"There is room for you at our table."

There is room for you at our table. We will share what we have, but you may not take it. Hell, actually it's more like, "you may take it, but you each will personally pay the cost in terms of your humanity". This community fought in this way. To each individual soldier that attempted to implement his "orders" for curfew, or lodging or food or information, the response was the same.

"There is room for you at our table.
Won't you join us?
This is how we live.
No one goes without.
We all share.
We work together and help each other.
We want you.
You don't have to fight, or kill people, or hurt people.

There is room for you at our table."

I won't tell some of the specifics of the book. The torture, degradation and death that the community suffered while keeping to their course.

"There is room for you at our table."

I won't tell you the end of the book either. That wasn't the point of sharing this, of writing about it. The point for me was that this book made me hyper aware of how far short I fall of my ideals.

The beauty and love and simplicity of the community response to the threat is perfect. It speaks to my soul of everything that is and should be and could be beautiful in us.

I have examined my mind and heart and soul and found myself wanting. I couldn't do it. I couldn't watch a child clubbed down without trying to stop or possibly kill the clubber. I couldn't let you take what my family needed to survive. I would fight and possibly kill to protect me and mine.

Yet I am a good person. I detest war and greed. I try to avoid hate and poison in my speech and actions. I have no desire to take or own what isn't mine (but what would I do if you had medicine and my child needed it?). I stand up for what I believe is right, but am perhaps too often silent because I really don't know what is "right".

For me it always comes down to this.

The macrocosm is merely an amplified reflection of the microcosm.

And I am human.